Chickens

A pot of chicken stock simmering on the stove. The windows edged with moisture. The wind howling outside while inside, all is well, warm, and welcoming. That’s what this soup is about.

Today I’m feeling especially grateful for the people who grow our food and the animals that become our meals. That our food is well-tended before it reaches our plates is a gift. I appreciate what nourishes my body and the bodies of those I love. Abundance comes to us in so many ways and I feel rich and full and blessed.

Heat a large stock pot over medium-high heat. Add the oil, onions and carrots and sauté for 7 to 10 minutes or until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the ginger and sauté for another 2 to 3 minutes. Add the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil to heat through. Serve with a dollop of Cilantro Sesame Pesto.

I’m sure that other parts of the country are beginning to thaw (if they ever were really frozen), but up here in Maine, the idea of having the oven on for a couple of hours to bake potatoes, bread, pie and a roast while we pull our chairs up around the stove to warm our toes, hands and cheeks is still quite in vogue.

This is one I made yesterday when the wind was howling – still. The crew was happy to run from the barn to the house to find a blast of warm air hit their cheeks as they came in for tea or to check on the new baby chicks.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Pierce the skin of the potatoes with a fork and place on the middle rack bake for one hour or until the potatoes are tender in the middle and give a little when you squeeze them. You can do this step ahead of time. When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut them in half and scoop out the flesh on the inside. Save the flesh for gnocchi or a soup and place the skins onto a baking sheet.

Reduce oven to 300 degrees. Divide the artichoke quarters evenly among the the potato skins and top with slices of Fontina. Grind the pepper on top and bake until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

Preheat oven to 400°. Rub the chicken outside and inside with the herbs, salt, pepper, paprika, and oil. Bake for 1 1/2hours or until the legs feel loose in the joint. Serve with mashed potatoes

Serves 4-6

Variation:

Lemon Garlic Chicken

Follow the instructions above and stuff the chicken with one whole lemon cut in half and two heads of garlic. If you’re roasting it the quick way, place the chicken on top of the lemon and garlic, then roast.

They came by mail, packed in a box no bigger than a shoe box. Seven downy Buff Orpington female chicks are now safely ensconced in a lobster crate in our bathroom with the door firmly shut to keep out Charlie, the cat. My initial plan, one that decidedly did NOT include having them spend any time in the house, was to sneak them under a broody hen in the middle of the night, removing the eggs she was nesting on and introducing the baby chicks. Anyone who has ever had cute, tiny baby chicks in their house who have then grown into unruly, ungainly, dust- and chicken-poop-flinging teenagers can feel my pain when I say I’m determined that the chicks will not be in the house for long.

Irresistible to pick up

The intsy flaw in this plan is that, for the first year ever, I don’t have a broody hen. I can’t tell you if it’s the cooler weather or the lack of a rooster (Fluffy the rooster died this winter) but none of these hens are feeling the mama urge.

I put my problem out to Twitter and a few people suggested either fake eggs or ping pong balls as an encouragement, thinking that someone is bound to think they are hers. Having one child who saves, hoards and parses her holiday candy, I had some pastel, plastic Easter eggs still in the house into which I added some flour for weight. I then taped them shut and put them in a nest. This is what they thought of that idea…

Kicked 'em right out!

However, Plan b is now in place. I have a lobster crate, a heat light, chick starter and reams of newspaper. They will be protected from the other hens in the coop by the lobster crate while they stay warm under the heat lamp. Once they have feathers and are eating regular feed, I’ll turn them loose with the rest of the flock.

“Mama, WHY are we the only ones who take care of the chickens?” say the girls one morning. (They aren’t but who’s counting.)

“I tell you what, I’ll do the chickens both morning and evening if you cook dinner tonight,” I say with complete certainty that they’ll choose chickens.

“DEAL!” they say.

So then goes the conversation about what they’ll make and how they’ll make it all by themselves. Admittedly, they did ask questions and I did hang around the kitchen to field them, but I didn’t touch a pot or a pair of tongs once.

They served it with asparagus from the garden and even figured out how to use the pasta water to blanch the asparagus. The amounts of the peas and the cheese are approximate as I wasn’t in there measuring, but the creme fraiche and the salmon are exact.

It wasn’t just edible; it was GOOD!

Salmon, Creme Fraiche and Peas with Penne
1 pound package of penne
4 oz. creme fraiche
1 1/2 to 2 cups peas. The girls used frozen, but if you have fresh peas? Heaven.
1 1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese. I was skeptical but it was great!
salt and pepper
4 oz. smoked salmon

Cook the pasta for 5 minutes in boiling salted water. Add the asparagus for 4 more minutes. Remove asparagus with tongs to a platter and add the peas to the water for 1 minute. Drain and return to the pasta pot. Add the creme fraiche, cheddar cheese and smoked salmon and stir until the cheddar is melted. Add salt and pepper to taste. Squeeze half a lemon over the asparagus and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

The sun was bright and high in the sky as I turned the compost pile today. I find few things more satisfying for releasing aggression (not that I have any, of course) than turning a pile of garden refuse, kitchen waste and office paper into food for the garden. As I stuck my pitchfork into the pile, I heard a squeak… and froze. Pulling a little dried grass away from the surface, I found a tiny, eyes-not-yet-opened… baby rat. And after another shuffle of a little more grass, it’s brothers or sisters. Four of them. All blindly scrambling for warmth into each other and trying to avoid the sudden light into their little burrow. Do I need to say out loud how cute they were?

So it’s official. I’m a hypocrite. I could. Not. Kill. The Babies. And yet, I will absolutely eat meat that is packaged in one way, shape or form. Hey, even local meat has to come in a package. Even my own chickens. Can’t kill ’em. Would if I HAD to, but don’t, so can’t bring myself to do it.

The worst part is that two days later I go out to check on the hens and the coop. I putz around in the coop for awhile, cleaning, tucking up the hawk netting and checking their water. There were seven eggs in the coop and I figured I’d wait an hour or two to make sure no one else wanted to lay. Less than two hours later I head back to the coop only to discover no eggs, no trace of eggs. None. The hens didn’t get them because I can’t see one single trace of egg yolk or shell. But rats could have rolled them through the big hole I discover in a corner of hay. What do I do? March straight up to the shed for the rat poison to kill the suckers dead for getting my eggs.

Our retirement home for aging chickens is woefully short on the production of eggs right now. One egg per day – total – just isn’t cutting it. It could have something to do with how freaking cold it is here right now (Even my husband is wearing his fingerless mittens today. In the house.) … or that they are all molting. How unfair is it of Mother Nature to cause her sweet hens to drop their feathers on some of the coldest days of the year? The coop is well insulated now with a layer of feathers, but the hens are scraggly, cold and sorry looking.

The plan is to every year or other year add some yearlings to the brood so that the egg production stays level. As hens age, they lay fewer and fewer eggs. And while a true farmer would allocate them to the stew pot, I just can’t do it.

They were precious cargo in the back of our car. Held with great care. Me without my chicken bin lined with hay, but instead with three cooing girlies in the back of the car content to hold them on the way home.

When I first went to college, I was sure that I wanted to be a veterinarian. While I’m a far cry from that now as a chef and owner of a Maine windjammer, I’m inching in that direction again by having chickens and a cat and dreaming about my own horses, goats and pigs.

We’ve had chickens for almost two years now and I’ve, until this morning, never seen one hatch an egg. My patient daughter has. My daughter who can’t sit still hasn’t. Guess which side of the spectrum I fall?

As I sat on the fresh sawdust I’d just spread for the hens, Chocolate hopped up into a nesting box. The one they all prefer to use was overcrowded with three other hens all vying for prime real estate as they answered the call of their rhythms. Chocolate fussed and pecked and adjusted as one does sometimes when they are settling in for a nap, getting everything just right.

She then began to rock back and forth a bit. It looked a little like gentle labor, which I suppose it was. Her back end came up a bit and then the egg began to appear. Her membranes surrounded the egg as it gently plopped onto the hay.

Amazing. Animals are amazing.

Annie
So grateful to have these simple, gentle beings gifting us fresh eggs every day

About Me

For over 30 years I have honed my craft with both knife and pen. I cook on both my wood burning stove aboard the Maine windjammer J&E Riggin and at home on my Vulcan gas stove. I have written and published two cookbooks and am currently writing my third.
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